Machines such as, for example, on and off-highway haul trucks, railway cars, and other types of heavy equipment are used to perform a variety of tasks. Some of these tasks involve carrying large, awkward, loose, and/or heavy loads and, because of the size of the machines and/or poor visibility provided to operators of the machines, these tasks can be difficult to complete safely and effectively. In fact, it is not uncommon for part of the load to fall from the machine completely unnoticed by the operator. This problem can be exacerbated when the machine is remotely or autonomously controlled. A lost load can result in low productivity and efficiency, as well as potential obstruction and/or contamination of roadways, railways, or waterways. The lost load can also damage other machines and harm living organisms in the immediate vicinity.
One way to minimize the affect of a lost load may be to automatically detect a lost load in the path of an autonomous vehicle and then automatically reroute the autonomous vehicle around the lost load. An example of this strategy is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,610,815 (the '815 patent) issued to Gudat et al. on Mar. 11, 1997. The '815 patent describes an autonomous vehicle equipped with a front mounted laser scanner and a vehicle positioning and navigation system. The laser scanner transmits an infra-red beam pulse in a known angular direction. The time for the beam to reflect off an object and return to the scanner is used to calculate the distance to the object in this angular direction from the scanner. An image comprising many pulses is represented by data pixels, each pixel having a range value and an angle value (cylindrical coordinates), both values associated with the object's location. The vehicle positioning and navigation system projects the vehicle's path into the plane of the image, and filters out pixels not in the vehicle's path. The remaining pixel data is transformed from cylindrical to Cartesian coordinates. Each transformed pixel has a road height value and a horizontal range value, both values associated with the object's location. This data is used to fit a curve to the height at the center of the road, the curve representing the expected road height value at each horizontal range value. When the actual road height values are sufficiently different from the expected road height values, the vehicle positioning and navigation system reroutes the vehicle to avoid the detected object, now classified as an obstacle.
Although the laser scanner of the '815 patent may detect a lost load in the path of an autonomous vehicle, it may do little to detect a load lost by the autonomous vehicle itself. Furthermore, though the vehicle positioning and navigation system of the '815 patent may identify a lost load, it may do little to identify damage to a road surface caused by a lost load. In addition, though the vehicle positioning and navigation system of the '815 patent may reroute the autonomous vehicle to avoid a lost load, it may provide little warning to other machines to avoid the geographical location of the lost load, or arrange for cleanup, salvage, or repair necessitated by the lost load.
The disclosed system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.